All You Need to Know About The Benefits Of CRM Software

As the name suggests, customer relationship management (CRM) software can help you manage and nurture relationships with your prospects and customers throughout their buying cycle. You can start by identifying promising leads, nurture them carefully till they are ready to buy, and close deals promptly. Needless to say, CRM software can boost your sales and profitability. If you are still not convinced we provide the benefits of this solution in detail. You can also read our buyer’s guide on how to select a suitable app for your needs as well as brief reviews of the main features and unique elements of six leading CRM systems.

Benefits of CRM Software

Streamlining your processes

CRM software can be used to streamline all aspects of customer interactions. You can manage contacts, set appointments, monitor marketing campaigns, handle customer support, and perform other tasks. The solution offers reporting, analytics, and dashboard tools to enable business owners to get an overview as well as insight into their operations. They can identify trends and spot patterns to control customer engagement more efficiently.

Task Tracking

It is important to meet deadlines in the business world. You can do this by entering info such as scheduled appointments and crucial tasks. Plus, the software allows you to sync this data with a calendar so that you get notifications about upcoming deadlines and tasks.

For example, if there is an upcoming sales call with a promising lead, the CRM solution sends an email reminder about it. If a customer has a birthday coming up, your sales reps would be reminded about it so that they can greet the customer with birthday wishes. This sort of personalized engagement can help you build deeper and more valuable relationships with your customers. In short, CRM software can help you give personalized attention to each customer and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

Management of your sales reps

CRM software can help to manage your sales reps, track their progress, and gauge their effectiveness at lead nurturing and closing deals. This system provides you stats on each rep’s sales figures including info such as average lead contact time, conversion rate, and task completion time. You can use this data to recognize top performers and to offer extra help to reps who lag behind. Over time, the CRM solution can make your sales unit to perform more efficiently and productively to maximize sales.

Better organization

If you are dealing with thousands of customers, it can become difficult to organize their data. CRM software helps by making it simple to keep customer data organized and findable. You can maintain a contact list and get relevant info such as each customer’s phone number, email address, birthday, and buying history.

It is easy to search the CRM app for the information you need, and you don’t need to rely on paper or outdated techniques. Many products use metadata so you can easily search using broad terms and general keywords instead of specific ones.

Improved selling opportunities

You can use a good CRM app to collect relevant customer data and identify more selling opportunities. For instance, you can track a particular consumer’s buying trends to learn which products they are interested in.

When you launch a similar product, you can contact this customer and inform them. As a result, you can boost sales without having to spend money on advertising to get new customers. Instead, you can capitalize on your existing customers to get repeat sales and keep them happy at the same time.

Enhanced Social Media Marketing

Another important benefit of CRM software is their ability to make use of social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc. This enables you to track all elements of your social media campaigns. For instance, you can learn which websites are sending the most traffic, what customers are saying about your product, and the overall consumer experience. You can thus identify trends and patterns, and use the info to make your social campaigns more effective and enhance your brand’s online presence.

Now that you have learn about the major benefits of CRM software solutions, read on to learn how to get a suitable system for your unique needs.

Buyer’s Guide to CRM Software

Be clear about what you need

To start, be clear about what you wish to achieve with the CRM software. Look for a package that is suitable for your company’s size and needs. Then, make a list of features you need such as contact management, shared database, sales tracking, opportunity tracking, customer support functionality and others. Be aware of your business goals and select a software app that can help you achieve them.

Scalability

It is also important to consider the long-term growth and demands of your company. This makes it important to invest in a scalable solution. We recommend a cloud-based app because it can accommodate more contacts when necessary and enhanced data storage. Plus, you can easily buy upgrades if the need arises. The main thing is not to get locked in a long-term contract with a provider whose product has limited scalability.

Integration with existing systems

A major issue with some CRM software is their incompatibility with popular business apps such as QuickBooks, MS Excel, and Outlook. Therefore, it is smart to look for a product that integrates smoothly with your existing infrastructure. This can minimize your learning curve and you can get started with the CRM platform quickly and easily. Plus, you don’t have to waste time on duplicate data entry as you can easily import and export data thanks to the integrations.

Mobile features

Mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones are used by many employees to stay productive on the go. These devices enable them to stay updated on project status and to complete tasks from anywhere, anytime. To help mobile employees do their work in the field, get a CRM app that can be accessed and used on mobile devices.

Reliable customer support

You might have trouble learning how to effectively use all the features and components of the CRM solution. Therefore, select a vendor that offers reliable service and easy access to support agents who can help during the transition and later if you have any issues. Ideally, the vendor should offer support on multiple channels such as phone, live chat, and email. Plus, if your company works round the clock you need to find a provider who offers 24/7 customer support.

Vendor stability

Finally, select a vendor who has a proven track record of offering a quality solution and professional support. If the provider goes out of the business midway through the contract, your company could be in trouble. Therefore, choose a vendor who has been around for a long time. Read online reviews and get feedback from references and current users to get a good idea of a provider’s service quality and reputation.

To further help your search we provide a brief overview of the main features, benefits, and unique elements of six popular CRM apps:

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is designed by sales professionals and hardcore web app developers. You can use the app to organize your leads and get a bird’s-eye view of your sales. This allows you to focus on priority deals. You can set up your account quickly and get started easily.

The unique element of Pipedrive is direct sales. You can use the software to efficiently manage your company’s sales pipeline. The app is intuitive and helps you identify priority leads and deals, and create a personalized approach for each of them. It is used by freelancers, small businesses, and medium-sized enterprises in multiple industries.

Nutshell CRM

Nutshell CRM is used by numerous inbound sales teams to perform productively and accelerate deal closure. You can get started quickly as the setup of this cloud-based solution is simple and easy. There is no need for extra training or consultation to use its features. If you run into any issues, you can depend on the reliable support team to help you out.

The unique aspect of Nutshell CRM is it acts as a comprehensive CRM hub that can make your sales reps more efficient by offering them simple yet effective enterprise-grade features. Your sales reps can use the info stored in the system to make smarter decisions and close more deals. This app offers useful features for small and medium-sized businesses.

Freshsales

Freshsales is an outstanding CRM app because collates the functions of standard CRM systems and also offers its own method to prioritize pipeline opportunities and boost sales. The solution not only provides great sales insights, but also helps companies to use them to their benefit. This is the reason the platform is used by numerous small, medium-sized, and large companies around the world.

The unique aspect of Freshsales is it not only helps with lead capturing, but can also nurture, score, and verify them using multiple communication channels. Plus, it offers a sophisticated suite of features that includes affiliate management, call routing, call recording, and auto-dialers. Finally, you can expand its functionality as it can integrate smoothly with your existing business apps.

bpm’online

bpm’online CRM is designed around the BPM platform, which helps you to design and automate processes to enhance customer support to meet their expectations. Drag and drop features make customization easy with versions for both cloud and on-premise infrastructure.

The unique element of bpm’online is it combines both BPM and CRM functions in one system. You can use it to supervise marketing activities and events, simplify document processing, and monitor employee deliverables. The app offers insightful measurements and analytics for business results. It provides scalable features for the current and future needs of SMEs and large corporations.

Insightly

Insightly offers a host of useful functionality such as task management, pipeline management, and contact management to help you get a clear overview of your business and sales visibility, enhance customer communication, track customer deliverables, improve collaboration between business units, and boost efficiency and productivity. This CRM offers apps for Android, iOS, and Kindle mobile platforms and integrates smoothly with other popular business systems such as Outlook, Office, MailChimp, Evernotes, Gmail, and Google Apps.

The unique aspect of Insightly is it allows you to use CRM best practices to organize your contacts with a 360-degree view. This app is used by numerous freelancers as well as small and medium-sized businesses.

Zoho CRM

You can useZoho CRM to automate daily business tasks, track sales, and engage your customers on different platforms. Plus, you can take its mobile platform on location to get real-time updates. The app integrates seamlessly with popular business solutions such as Google Apps, ConstantConnect, QuickBooks, MailChimp, and MS Outlook.

The unique element of Zoho CRM is its Opportunity Tracking tool that allows you to see where your customer is in the sales cycle, as well as competitor profile, contact history, and deal size to enable you to craft more personalized messages. You can access all this data via accurate and dynamic dashboards and reports. The application is designed to work well whether you are an entrepreneur, small business, or large enterprise.

About Author

Kate Stephens is a young and creative graphic designer as well as the mastermind behind AlternativesFinder.com her own startup company aimed at providing customers with reliable and often cheaper alternatives to various popular brands and products from all possible markets.

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